Question

What are Merge and Centre? Write down the steps to merge a group of cells.

Answer 1

If you go to the Home menu in the ribbon and look in the Alignment grouping of commands, you will see a small icon in the lower, right-hand corner called Merge and Center. This command does just what it implies. It not only merges the cells into one larger cell, but it also centers the text. Merge and Center improves the appearance of a title or header by centering the text over a particular section of the spreadsheet. If you click on the More icon to the Merge and Center command, you will see other Merge options.

• The first one is Merge Across. This will merge multiple cells and more than one row at the same time. The text will remain left-justified.
• Then there are Merge Cells. This will merge multiple cells on one row and will keep the text left-justified.
• Finally, you have Unmerge Cells, which will undo the merged cells.

Let’s take a look at an example using the Merge and Center command. Imagine you are a painting contractor for residential homes. You created a spreadsheet to include several different costs for work requested by a new client. You have everything formatted nicely. The title, which includes the name of the client, the estimated number, and street address has been entered into cell Al. It would be nice if we could quickly and easily center the title across the top of the spreadsheet. Here are the steps.

1. Highlight the cells you want to merge. (In our example, Al through FI),
2. Go to the Home menu in the ribbon.
3. Look in the Alignment grouping of commands.
4. Click on Merge and Center.

Just like that, your title is centered and the cells have been merged into one larger cell. The benefit? Well, besides it looks better, you can make changes to the cells below and the title will remain centered: For instance, you can add a column (or delete one) and your title will not be affected. One important note about the Merge command: merging cells can delete data. Only the data in the upper-left cell will be kept once the cells have merged. Do not place data in every cell if you plan on merging multiple cells into one larger cell.